Use free Acrylic WiFi Scanner for real-time WiFi network analysis

Acrylic WiFi Scanner is a free software for Windows which can be used for real-time WiFi network analysis. Acrylic WiFi scanner can be used to display WiFi access points and the connected devices near you. It ca also gather information from a wide range of WiFi networks which includes 802.11/a, 802.11/b, 802.11/g, 802.11/n and 802.11/ac.

Acrylic WiFi Scanner

Features:

Access Points: WiFi network’s information like MAC address, SSID, BSSID can be obtained for all the connected users in your network.

Signal level: Lists out signal quality charts for WiFi channels and detected devices. With the help of this software one can continuously monitor the signal strength of a given network.

Inventory: You can pull all the known WiFi devices in one basket called – Inventory. Inventory can be used for your convenience to name known WiFi devices.

Passwords: With Acrylic WiFi Scanner, the WiFi passwords and default WPS Keys can be obtained. This could be useful for WiFi security analysis.

Channels: WiFi networks are classified based on channels – 2.4Ghz or 5Ghz.

Hardware independent: In order to scan the WiFi networks there is no need for special hardware. The installed software itself is enough for monitoring the WiFi networks.

How to install and set up Acrylic WiFi Scanner

Installing Acrylic WiFi scanner is a simple process. You can head over to Acrylic WiFi website and download the free version of Acrylic WiFi scanner, which is about 6 MB. With The free version of Acrylic WiFi scanner you will get features like monitoring WiFi networks which we have listed above.

If you are an advanced user and are looking for more deeper network analysis there are few advanced features which you can try:

Hidden networks: Just not the discoverable devices in the network, even the details of hidden WLAN networks can be obtained. By using the monitor mode capture feature one could get hidden network’s SSID names.

Packet viewer: Acts as a WLAN sniffer where captured network packets are shown.

Integration: Seamless integration with Wireshark with the help of acrylic innovative driver enabling Wireshark to capture WLAN packets under windows.

Once you have the downloaded the file – Click on it to complete the installation. You can choose the type of installation – Basic (default), Custom, depending on your requirement. Once the installation is complete – you are good to go.

We tried the basic set up of Acrylic WiFi scanner – The software did a quick scan within seconds and showed all the connected WiFi networks near us.

The following details were shown for the scanned networks: SSID, Mac Address, signal strength, no of channels, type of the network ( a, b,g,n or ac), maximum connection speed of network, WEP type (open or private), WPA, WPA2, WPS, password, WPS PIN, vendor, first seen, last seen and type.

The “Actions” section of the application lets you view the real-time signal strength of all the WiFi networks in a graphical representation. You can highlight any WiFi network of your choice and analyse it to see how it is performing. In addition to this, you can filter networks based on access point channel – 2.4 Ghz access point or 5 Ghz access point. In the main panel you could add networks to your inventory to keep all the known networks in one place to carry out network analysis.

Download this WiFi network scanner from its home page and let us know about your experience.

Chethan Thimmappa is a technology blogger and a mobile app developer. His areas of interests lies in Windows, Windows Phone, Cross-Platform App development and End-user design paradigms. He is passionate about cars and bikes.